Why?

Discourse comes as solution in place of Telegram and Reddit, two platforms that have been an integral part of our operations.

Telegram
Telegram groups were largely used to run our learning programs and communities. While groups work well during our learning program in coordinating discussions around a particular theme, they become obsolete the moment the purpose has been served. But there is still a need to keep in touch with all and facilitate discussions even after the learning program ends. This is where we decided to move all learning program graduates to our discourse board so we may continue the dialogue.

Reddit
Reddit was initially intended to be a discussion board for the community. While reddit became a place where people began to post opportunities, it failed to grow beyond that. Our ability to manoeuvre the platform to suit the needs of our collective was also significantly low.

Discourse is a free and open source forum that is heavily customisable. When we found Discourse, we could see how it could become the forum we envisioned. While we see a lot of potential, we are also figuring this out and therefore invite you to also collaborate in the process.

Using discourse is fairly simple. The UI is intuitive and we also intend to keep our design simple.